A STUDY ON THE EFFECT OF AI-POWERED CHATBOTS ON CUSTOMER SERVICE RESPONSE TIMES AND SATISFACTION WITH REFERENCE TO E-COMMERCE

Witnessing the changes brought by Artificial Intelligence in performing business operations, AI-powered chatbots are now effectively transforming customer service and represent a significant shift in how businesses interact with their customers. Chatbots can assist customers and potential clients in quickly finding or entering information by replying to inquiries via audio input, text input, or a combination of the two, eliminating the need for human interaction or manual investigation. (IBM, 2024) This study investigates the effects of AI chatbots on customer service efficiency and satisfaction, driven by the growing demand for businesses to deliver rapid, accurate, and cost-effective customer help in an increasingly digital marketplace. The rising use of AI chatbots by companies worldwide and changing customer expectations for an immediate response make this research very pertinent and important. No doubt choosing this research topic is influenced by three key reasons associated with the current business environment: the urgent need for study based on the massive surge of AI chatbots, ever-increasing customer demands for 24/7 support, and greater potential for reducing process costs using AI than through other innovations in service quality. This study aimed to investigate the effect of using AI chatbots on customer service response times compared to traditional human-only support systems. Further, to measure customer satisfaction during interaction with AI chatbots compared to human agents and to identify the main determinants of successful AI chatbots for customer service operations. The present study was based on primary data; researchers used a structured questionnaire to collect information. The sample size for the present study was 231 respondents using a combination of convenience and simple random sampling methods.